Today I’m sharing our Mindful Chef review. Never heard of Mindful Chef?
The company, based in Devon, supplies recipe boxes incorporating fresh, organic ingredients. Where possible, they don’t include refined carbs or sugars, are low in gluten, and sourced from organic, sustainable suppliers.
Mindful Chef Discount Code
Now delivering nationwide, Mindful Chef looks like a very attractive option if, like me, you’re short on time and talent, but like to eat tasty food each evening. If you’d like to try Mindful Chef click on the link below to save £20 on Mindful Chef:
If you prefer, click here to save 25% on your first FOUR Mindful Chef boxes, which is a great deal!
I was recently invited to try some complimentary dishes from the Mindful Chef menu. We were sent a recipe box with two dinners for two people – a jerk chicken dish, and a spicy pork chilli with avocado and sweet potato.
Like other recipe boxes I’ve tried, Mindful Chef uses paper packaging where possible, along with sheeps wool bags which keep meat cool and fresh for up to 36 hours.
Our delivery arrived on time, and was neatly packaged.
Most the meat and veggies were in tip-top condition, except for one pepper that was very ripe. This meant when I unpacked the box, everything fell out of the bag, leading to a fun game of Who can pick up the ingredients first: Sally or the dog? (spoiler alert: the dog won but it was a tomato, so she was disappointed)
Luckily, I had spare tomatoes in the fridge, so we were still able to complete both recipes. I emailed Mindful Chef who immediately offered us a discount on our next box to make up for it. I don’t hold it against the company – these things happen. Also since this review, I’ve paid for a dozen more Mindful Chef boxes and never had another issue.
To kick off our Mindful Chef review, we made jerk chicken with a sweetcorn and buckwheat side dish.
The chicken breasts were lovely quality. We butterflied them, coated them with jerk seasoning, then griddled for 5 minutes each side. To accompany the chicken, we boiled buckwheat for 15-minutes. While that happened, I roughly chopped red onion, pepper, chopped tomatoes, chilli and coriander. Mix the buckwheat and vegetables, and you’re done! I feel like this would have worked really well with Orzo, too.
The result was a light and tasty meal. For our tastes, the jerk seasoning was very mild. I’d also skip adding the coriander to the salad next time, but it was a quick and easy recipe. We liked that everything bar the oil to cook the chicken was supplied. Each ingredient was pre-measured meaning no waste, no fuss.
It was a couple of days before we cooked our second dish. It was a spicy pork chilli with paprika sweet potato wedges and avocado.
We’d had a large lunch so I opted not to cook sweet potato, serving the chilli with lettuce wraps instead.
The chilli was simplicity itself to make. Just fry off the pork with garlic, red onion, passata, smoked paprika and chilli flakes. Cook for 20 minutes, and you’re good to go.
Mindful Chef Review: Pros
There’s a lot to love about Mindful Chef. I like the ethos of the recipes; it feels like an easy way to ensure you’re eating good quality, healthy food.
I also really liked that virtually everything we needed is included and the recipes are fairly simple (we reviewed a Marley Spoon box last year and found you needed to have quite a few things in your cupboard, and the recipes we were sent were fairly involved). I’ve found the quality of the meat and the veg to be really good.
Mindful Chef says its recipes should take no more than 30 minutes to prepare, and they are definitely simple enough for novice cooks to tackle. I can imagine using the service a couple of nights a week, and picking up recipes you can recreate independently. Mindful Chef is a great way to introduce yourself to new dinner ideas if you tend to fall into a routine (which we definitely do).
Cost wise, two meals for two people costs around £25. To me, this is where you’re either a person who ‘gets’ recipe boxes or you aren’t. Remember you can save £10 on two boxes using the Mindful Chef discount code below:
If you can cook, and have a full store cupboard, then you can probably replicate these dishes yourself at a fraction of the cost. But if you’re like me, with almost no time or talent for cookery, then having someone send you JUST the right ingredients with some idiot-proof instructions – well, it feels like a fair price to pay. And I like that there’s no waste or leftover jar of this or that seasoning that you’ll throw away in six years when you realise it’s massively out of date.
Mindful Chef Review: Cons
I was fairly impressed with the quality of the vegetables we were sent. We did have one poor result, but luckily I had tomatoes and peppers to hand and could plug the gap. Having said that, these things happen and we’ve used Mindful Chef many times since then without any issues.
Portion sizes were definitely adult-sized, so I’d factor that in if you’re cooking with kids. Both of our Mindful Chef meals also provided me with lunch the next day. That’s not a bad thing, but if I was ordering for a family of four, I might be inclined to order for three.
You’re also slightly at the mercy of someone else’s taste-buds. We found the jerk seasoning very mild, but the chilli in the pork was very hot (and I say this as someone who LOVES hot food). But that’s really a very minor quibble, as everything was tasty.
Is Mindful Chef any good?
We have tried several recipe boxes and I would 100 percent say that Mindful Chef is the best. The produce quality, the organic and healthy ethos, together with ethical packaging and quick recipes is a winning combination.
Mindful Chef £20 Discount Code
We were provided with a free trial for the purposes of this review.
Mindful Chef is currently offering a 25% discount on your first FOUR recipe boxes with the website. For more info, head over to mindfulchef.com.
Both meals look lovely but it’s a shame about he vegetables. That salad is something I’ve never tried and not the sort of thing I’d cook but looks really nice.
Good point about the size of the meals, I was eating leftover buckwheat salad for lunch for a few days afterwards – not that that’s a bad thing I guess. Shame about the veg – we got really good quality, but I suppose it depends on the picker – maybe something they’ll iron out over time? I hope so, because I normally find healthy eating really dull, but our two recipes really appealed to me. And like you say, we’re always stuck in a menu rut here!
That’s a real shame about the vegetables! Recipes boxes are the sort of thing I would definitely order if I had a lot of money but I can’t justify it at the moment!